Suffern Middle School in Second Life

Liza Medina has designed a project investigating characterization using historical fiction with the central theme of the American Revolution. Students were experimenting today with different looks – and some discovered our colonists outfits!!! Wrong century! Her lesson plan and accounts will folllow but had to get these pics up to brighten your day!

This class was really successful and we will move them to voice next week.

Tuesday and Friday of this week I am spending the day at Suffern High School – working with the 9th graders(who already have accounts from last and some 10th graders (new accounts)in the foreign language classes. Once again, what the momentum to bring the kids in started with a few brave teachers (who succumbed to the pestering pressure of a few good teen avatars!) Kudos especially to Ms. Alessi who teaches Italian. After taking my in-service teacher workshop for SL, she jumped right in developing her curriculum and collaborating with other educators to help develop best practices.

Firesabre, our content creation firm, listened to our ideas for the island and are creating the builds with teacher input including shared photos. Take a look at teh pics to see the rearkable work they do! We have started with basic architecture in the style of the particular cultures each language might represent and along with the kids we will be creating artifacts, holding events and conducting academic exercises. Voice will be enabled on this island but students are only able to “keep their headsets” if they stick to speaking in their language of study. The first exercise the Italian classes will be conducting will take place in the cafe where they will be sordering from a menu and role-playing servers and customers. In addition the kids will be researching differennt regions of Italy in order to identify and recommend cultural artifacts and scearios for the build!

Suffern High School’s Foreign Language teachers have taken the leap and today I facilitated five classes with their entry (for 10th grade) or reentry (for freshman who had previously participated in learning on Ramapo last year when they were in 8th grade) The teacher, Laura Alessi teaches Italian, and has been contributing to the look and feel of the new Language Learning Island with photos and descriptions of the time she spends in Italy.